Germany’s football factory: a travel guide to the Ruhr

15.05.2024 - 11:29 / theguardian.com / Marlene Dietrich

In 1961, future West German chancellor Willy Brandt declared: “The sky above the Ruhr must be blue once more.” His words were greeted with what sounded like applause but was actually his audience falling off their chairs. Because the Ruhrpott, or Ruhrgebiet, an agglomeration of industrial cities that includes Gelsenkirchen (where England will play their opening match of the European Championship this summer), Dortmund (which hosts group matches as well as a semi-final), Essen and Duisburg was a place where the chimneys of the coal, iron and steel industries poked up above the smog like candles on a giant grey birthday cake. You were more likely to slip in unicorn droppings than breathe clean air in the Ruhrpott.

Today the notion of the Ruhr as a tourist destination may provoke as many German sniggers as Brandt’s prophecy back in 1961. But while this region of more than 5 million people may lack the fairytale castles of Bavaria or the coolness of Berlin, there’s plenty to divert the thousands of fans who will pour into the region in June and July. And that’s even if you leave aside the rich football heritage of the mighty Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04, and perennial battlers such as Rot-Weiss Essen, Bochum and Duisburg.

The deeds and personalities of the region’s great players are commemorated everywhere with wall plaques and massive murals. One is devoted to Dortmund’s 1950s hero Max Michallek, a title-winning veteran defender whose curt reply to Hamburg star Uwe Seeler’s crack about his age, “Even when I’m 70 I’ll stop you!” is the stuff of local legend.

The Ruhrgebiet is accurately described as the industrial valley of the kings. Everything here was built on an epic scale, whether it’s the steel and brick edifice of Zeche Zollverein, once the biggest coalmine in Europe and now a Unesco world heritage site; or Villa Hügel, 19th-century industrialist Alfred Krupp’s 399-room mansion; or the glowing “U” that tops the 75-metre high tower that housed the Dortmunder Union brewery.

Even the Lichtburg, Essen’s classic 1920s cinema (such a model of pre-war German movie-star elegance it’s a surprise not to find Marlene Dietrich propping up the bar) is the largest in Germany.

Much of the heavy industry has gone (the last coalmine closed in 2018), but there’s still an impressive amount left. From the Alsumer Berg (like most of the mound-like hills that dot the Ruhr, it’s a former waste dump), where on a fresh spring morning snowy blossom drips from blackthorn trees and thrushes trill beneath a sky which – fulfilling Brandt’s prediction – is as clear and blue as a baby’s eyes, you can look down on the ThyssenKrupp iron and steel plant. It’s a metal metropolis of rolling mills, cooling towers, conveyors and